Live Turtle Bot

erco

http://news.yahoo.com/live-turtle-bot-maneuvered-remote-control-201342208.html

Risky territory. Someone's gonna complain anytime an animal is involved, no matter how "non-invasive".

Martin_H

That is truly strange and it looks like someone took turtle graphics a bit to literally.

varnon

Interesting, but I don't think vertebrates are a good candidate for this type of work. Although yes turtles clearly do have instinctive behaviors, they are also pretty good at learning. I think that after some time, most vertebrates will learn to stop paying attention to the visual stimuli. The paper doesn't suggest the authors have a good understanding of learning (actually few current psychologists do) and it doesn't seem like any turtle was used more than once. The note that the turtles became "sluggish with fatigue" could just as easily be interpreted as a learning effect, not a fatigue effect. Still, I think it is very interesting, especially the sections noting what kind of visual stimuli are needed to control the turtle.


Also Erco, you are right, the yahoo comments are pretty bad. I actually don't get it myself. As far as research goes this is very very very non-invasive. I don't see any problem at all getting this type of method past an ethics review board.